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Values Clarification: Its Process and Effects |
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Values Clarification: Its Process and Effects
Methodologies direct how a child learns in school and values clarification, closely associated with programs in self esteem, has been part of the curriculum for over three decades. It is the methodology that has led to a widespread dumbing-down of over a generation of American students.
The values clarification methodology of teaching came into widespread use about twenty years ago, it was going to revolutionize teaching, thinking and acting. It was introduced with a scientific aura as if it were tailor-made to fit with our technologically changing world. It was going to help even the very young students with their “interpersonal relationships” so they could get along well with one another and it was going to help children apply what they learned to their everyday lives. People, no matter who they are, can be a dupe for something new especially if it sounds good or different. Certainly the values clarification approach was different. It was going to loosen up the youth to learning and make the youth autonomous decision-makers. WOW! That sounded great! Teachers went to workshops and seminars and learned about putting the new methodology to work in the classrooms. Strategy books were written. Textbooks and curriculum guides incorporated these new techniques and soon values clarification was in full swing in the schools. It was the forward movement and nobody looked back to see that the learning of academic skills was being left in the dust.
What about the word “values?” How often do you see or hear the word defined? “Values, “ as it applies to values clarification, are the set of beliefs that are currently unique for the person, because they are beliefs he has chosen for himself. These beliefs that are self-chosen and then acted on as his OWN, result in new attitudes and behaviors based upon what one feels is “right for him now.” How harmful can that be one might ask, as one pictures lists, whereby, the person doing the choosing is fully knowledgeable about what he is doing? The problem in understanding values clarification is that the child is not fully aware of how he is being affected and in what ways he is being affected. He is not aware that values clarification methodology is a process that is ongoing so that the classroom child is being exposed to it in a variety of activities and curricula over and over again. Thus, the process becomes familiar and readily acceptable. The child is so smoothly led into a new morality that he is not able to tell anyone why he rejects his parents rules or religious beliefs. The child has been so subtly and systematically coerced to do so that it seems right and he is not consciously aware it has even happened.
Most people seem to think that the teacher enters the classroom and announces to the class that, “Today we are having values clarification activities and we are going to list a new set of beliefs or actions on the board and after some discussion, you pick out what you want to believe and how you want to behave based on that belief.” If it were that simple, it would never have gotten off the ground.
DEFINING THE METHOD
THE SUB-PROCESSES AND STRATEGIES
1. Self-examination or the use of ‘I.’
2. Communicating feelings
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It is interesting to note that students or the parents of students are told that no one will be with the teen on a date in the back seat of a car, therefore the youths have to know about choosing. Parents are immediately intimidated at the prospect of their child in such a situation and are eager for some “expert” advice. What they do not know is that the student will not be taught the correct action to take only that the choice is theirs. Suppose the same methods were used in math where the student was never taught the right method of doing a problem to begin with. When the student has a math test, he is not going to be able to say, “But this choice was right for me” when he chooses the wrong answer. The values clarification approach will not work in math and it won’t work in that back seat either.
8. Acting on one’s chosen beliefs or publicly affirming: Acting on a new belief or attitude may not always mean physically doing so, but can mean claiming the value in other ways first. This is also called affirming. The student may present the idea as his own in conversation or in writing and do so repeatedly. Often students in class are prompted to write letters to newspaper editors or to others expressing their feelings on a particular issue especially political, not because the students have any expertise, they just puppet what was discussed in the class. Letter writing is a means of public affirmation. It is important to remember that one’s actions always begin as thoughts. Therefore, as the student adjusts his thinking, little by little, to accept new values then the actions will follow.
9 Altered states of consciousness
Fantasy and relaxation exercises are also part of the counterfeit religion being ushered in to take the place of the Judeo-Christian belief in prayer. Prayer traditionally has been known as a means of calming one’s fears and stress by placing personal troubles outside oneself and in the hands of God. In contrast, the hypnotic techniques are part of the human potential movement where man is supposed to have all the answers within his own self –- a tremendous burden. Having kicked God out of the schools, educators turn to what is being called the New Age religion which is a blend of Eastern mysticism and the occult and has not only brought the anti-God movement solidly into the classroom, but is another added dimension of the values clarification process of producing unthinking robots ready to follow whoever leads.
This is not what the education system should be about. In the classroom, students should be fully conscious about what they are learning so that they may be able to gain the knowledge and skills to think for themselves. The ever-intruding mind-bending or psychological manipulation that is linked with social problems is usurping the classroom day that should be used teaching academic skills. Is it any wonder young people do not know very basic skills, do not know math, spelling, geography, science, etc? Schools have little time for academics anymore. Perhaps that is why students are given so much homework.
The book entitled, Clarifying Values Through Subject Matter by Harmin, Kirschenbaum and Simon (Winston Press, 1973) instructs teachers to use “the pronoun ‘you’ to directly involve students, urging them to relate the subject matter to their own lives” and to “employ this form of questioning repeatedly, encouraging students to think, to clarify, to affirm.”
Thus, you have the very basic components that make up the values clarification process. Certainly someone may ask, why couldn’t these same techniques be used to steer the student to the right choices? There are many choices to be made, how one dresses, what occupation one may pursue, where one lives, and on and on. But there are Truths that are part of our religion, part of our very being that we are to live by. They help hold civilization together and were the basis for our civil laws. These truths are based on the Ten Commandments given to us by God.
Once again, we are back to definitions, and “self-esteem” is another good sounding phrase that does not send out negative signals and would not immediately meet with opposition. That is, unless perhaps, one may be familiar with the work of Jack Canfield promoter of self-esteem seminars and who is a co-author of a book entitled 100 Ways to Improve Self-Concept in the Classroom. Canfield even served on the California Task Force on Self-Esteem, a task force whose “feel good” messages became the target of Doonesbury cartoons. But while people were laughing, the ridiculous became the norm, and Maryland soon followed suit with its own Self-Esteem Task Force. Other members of the California Task Force were those who are involved in Eastern mysticism and other occultist practices. Jack Canfied was also appearing at seminars sponsored by the Association for Humanistic Psychology along with these same people.
How much of a connection is there between values clarification and youth suicide? As the student’s thinking patterns become in line with the Secular Humanists so too will their acting patterns. Secular Humanists believe in the right to suicide, all part of the “quality of life ethic” that runs through the curriculum.
What began in the classroom as “death education” was changed to “suicide prevention” education for obvious reasons, but continues to use the same values clarifying activities as well as altered states of consciousness. Two of the suggested values clarification strategies are writing one’s own obituary and epitaph. The values clarification authors included the following in their comments about these strategies.
Activities using altered states of consciousness have student imagining their own death as they are put through a guided imagery trip, whereby they see themselves in a casket as if looking down from the ceiling. Teachers are instructed that they may use a darkened room, candles or organ music to heighten the effect.
Films too, are important to the values clarification process as they can get the viewer emotionally involved. Scientific films that show how electricity is produced or a film on cooking would not figure into the process, because they are strictly educational. But too many of the films the youth see in the classroom are made to have a strong emotional impact on the viewer.
Values and Violence
Never in our knowledge of the school system have students turned on the schools, teachers and students with the sole purpose of cold-blooded murder. Yet this has been happening all across the country so that schools are protected with security systems and even police assigned to schools.
The very fact that these young killers have not gone into a shopping center or some other place where there are crowds to go on a shooting spree, but have been targeting their own schools to vent their anger is a message in itself. There is something going on in the school that has caused to be unleashed in the minds of these students such murderous intent.
Built into the values clarification strategies and vice-versa are exercises dealing with a full range of social, political and environmental problems. New programs are always being reintroduced and integrated throughout the curriculum on teen pregnancy, AIDS, drug abuse, and child abuse. As if this were not depressing enough, the students are also burdened with the idea that the world’s natural resources will run out and there may not be enough food, fuel or clean water for their generation to survive. There was the global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, now it is climate change. The values process fits in very well here, because real solutions to any of the above need not be presented. Questions or suggestions may be offered by the teacher to facilitate discussion, but actual discussions of the great technological strides, say for example, in agriculture, may never be mentioned unless the students themselves know what they are. The students alone will be hashing these problems out among themselves, while getting the impression that the world is going to pot around them. Remember, when classroom activities center on open discussions and opinions, no right or wrong answers need be given, and no truth need be taught.
It needs to be said that all Catholic sex education programs, as well as, the values clarification methods are used throughout the school years. Sex education would never take 8 or 12 years if it were not primarily values clarification. The values clarification method or process does not allow for one to learn the absolutes of right and wrong. Right and wrong are always muddied by “choices.” The often used small group discussions are of little merit when they are the opinion of the peers in the group.
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